


(Not) Moving On

by TottWriter



Series: Shards of Reality [8]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, College AU (technically), Getting Back Together, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, M/M, Melodrama, Misunderstandings, Modern Fantasy AU, Pining, Poor Life Choices, Post-Break Up, an overabundance of film metaphors, disaster gay Ennoshita Chikara, more tags to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-06-20 01:31:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15523101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TottWriter/pseuds/TottWriter
Summary: After an almost fairytale-esque whirlwind romance with Tanaka during his first year at University, Ennoshita is taking their break-up just fine. He is definitely not endlessly pining and moping, and going home for the summer absolutely will not devolve into a complete pity party.Okay, so perhaps that's a total lie. Chikara is self-aware enough to admit that he's a hair's breadth from fulfilling more or less every 'pathetic ex' stereotype going.Still, that doesn't change the fact that when he gets home for the summer, something genuinely odd seems to be going on. And amid the strangeness, he can't help but wonder if there's a chance he can somehow win Tanaka back after all.





	1. Set Me Up (So I Can Fall)

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've had the idea for this story for quite a while, but EnnoTana Week 2018 has finally given me the push to write it! There will be 7 chapters, each one _more or less_ corresponding to one of the seven prompts. Strap in, folks, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
> 
> The original inspiration and entire soundtrack for this song is Sleeping Wolf's song '[Dreaming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvpjbpm8MLA)', which I have played so many times now I that could sing it in my sleep. I thoroughly recommend a listen, but perhaps not _that_ much of a listen.
> 
> * * *
> 
> _Day One: **Spring** \- Red - Flowers_
> 
> * * *

 

It starts with a flat tyre.

  

> _No, scratch that—let's rewind._

 

* * *

 

It _starts_ with volleyball, let’s be honest here. Volleyball and an almost three-year-long gay crisis. Pining and misunderstandings, long nights spent dreaming about particular muscle groups and the sheen of sweat across Tanaka’s abs as he gratuitously goes shirtless at any given opportunity. Countless would-be interventions from Kinoshita and Narita, elbows to the stomach from Nishinoya, knowing smirks from that bastard Suga…all of it.

It starts, in short, with a crush of such high calibre that Chikara has enough material that he could make not one, but two or maybe even _three_ romantic comedies out of it all.

And in a way, ironically enough, it really gets going with the sort of fairytale ending those films would fade to black on, credits rolling. Him and Tanaka stood there together, neither one quite believing their luck as they hold each other, eyes locked and both of them refusing to acknowledge the wolf whistling from their teammates or the cries of: _“Finally!”_ which a few of the assholes have the nerve to call out. They appreciate the fireworks though. It’s quite a simple illusion, but a pretty effective one all the same. He makes a note to remember that for one of the films he’s planning on basing off this moment...

It’s sunny, that day when the prologue begins. Sunny but cold, the last vestiges of winter clinging on enough to leave a layer of frost across the world. Spring flowers peep through here and there, and their breath fogs in the air in front of them, forming misty clouds as they laugh the stress of three years away, embracing for the whole damn world to see. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, right? The story’s over and they have their ever after.

Chikara can’t quite believe it. No, really. When does this happen? When does a crush this long and established _actually_ go somewhere? Life isn’t like a film—he knows that one well enough—and this is where film leaves off anyway, because the truth is always far messier than a jubilant ride into the sunset, spring blossoms surrounding them as they declare undying love for one another.

Okay, okay, so that last part is an exaggeration. He’s pretty far gone but not _that_ much a hopeless romantic, and Tanaka…he’s… Well, the fact of the matter is, they’re both eighteen years old at this point and frankly they don’t actually take the time for all that many declarations before the hormones take over and they’re basically just sucking face. It’s not really that romantic at _all_ with hindsight, but it feels pretty good at the time and that’s what counts, right?

It’s good. It’s better than good. It’s great. Fantastic. _Perfect_ —and that’s the whole problem, really, because they only actually have a couple of weeks together before Chikara has to go away to university, Tanaka starts his apprenticeship at the potions factory run by his uncle, and long-distance, it turns out, is somehow almost as torturous as the endless months and years of pining in would-be secret.

And—as always—Chikara is his own worst enemy.

The self-doubt has crept in again even before they part ways. If he’s honest with himself it’s been ever-present since the day he was born, so where did this delusion come from that he’d suddenly change just because it turns out Tanaka’s apparently just as much an idiot for _him_ as he is for volleyball and spontaneously going shirtless?

Because, and here’s the problem, who’s to say Tanaka even _is_ that much of an idiot for him? He’s been ostensibly pining over someone else the entire time Chikara’s known him. Can he really be sure this is what Tanaka wants, and not some weird kind of settlement now that all other options are well and truly off the table?

It’s a mean, low thought, and Chikara hates himself every time it crops up. But long distance is _hard_. It’s especially hard when he’s alone on campus, bowed by work, and his messages from Tanaka consist mostly of cheerful remarks that he’s missed, alongside countless detailed updates about life back home.

Because, you know, his homesickness wasn’t already halfway crippling him even without those reminders, not at _all_.

But there they are, regardless: snapshots of the life his boyfriend is leading without him. Notable incidents include:

—A picture of Tanaka and a rather frazzled-looking Asahi by the school, with the caption: _“Hey, look who me n Noya ran into on our morning jog! Noya got so mad he hasn’t joined the neighbourhood team that he sent him flying haha.”_

—A picture of Tanaka, inevitably shirtless, standing in front of a row of bottles. _::Another batch all ready to go! Ha bet you thought I’d smash stuff way more than this::_  He’s flexing because of course he is, but it’s not just for Chikara because a couple of hours later the same picture goes up on instagram, for everyone to see and admire.

…Why the hell did he show Tanaka how to use instagram, again? He really must have a thing for self-sabotage. Pictures like that weren’t designed to be _shared_.

And there’s a constant stream of this stuff, from pictures of dogs, to pictures of long nature hikes with Noya or Kinoshita, and in all of them— _all_ of them—Tanaka is beaming. Happy. Content.

Towards the end of his first semester he gets a series of selfies of Tanaka and Noya stood together, grinning maniacally. All have captions along the lines of: _“Better come back soon, we’re up to old tricks again without you.”_

It’s sweet, but in a bitter, painful way. This isn’t how it’s meant to go, is it? What’s the point in getting together only to always be apart?

Still, summer is better. Summer is good. Summer is, in fact, _wonderful_ , because he’s home, and Tanaka’s so transparently over the moon that they spend almost every spare minute together.

He picks his boyfriend up from work each day and they spend their evenings at his house, cuddling on his bed; hiding from Saeko at Tanaka’s and pretending they can’t hear her egg them on; sitting on a hilltop with the breeze (and Tanaka’s fingers) running through his hair; down by the little stream in the valley, barefoot and splashing each other as they walk through the shallow water before collapsing in a tangled heap of limbs on the bank. They stare into each others’ eyes and pretend like they’d actually have the nerve to do more than kiss each other, out here where anyone could stumble across them.

Summer is like a dream, but the trouble with those is that you have to wake up at the end of them, and the cold reality Chikara returns to is several hundred miles away in a poky student flat which Tanaka has never visited. Reality is lectures and coursework and a part time job on the side, and less and less time every week and month. Reality is their calls going from dedicated video conferences at scheduled times each evening, to nightly voice calls while Chikara does his grocery shopping or Tanaka walks home from work, down to twice-weekly, then weekly. Reality is a relationship conducted via instant messages and photographs.

Chikara stays on campus over New Year because he only gets a week off from his lectures _anyway_ , and the part time job gives him even less than that. Tanaka doesn’t visit, too caught up with work as well. New Year is the busiest time for his uncle’s business. Everyone wants good fortune, Tanaka explains mournfully over the phone, whether that comes from luck, prayer, or magic. Work has picked up and he’s lucky to get a day to himself, let alone enough time to travel.

It’s fine, though, honestly it is, because Chikara is a realist. He’s been tracking things. He’s seen the pattern. He’s pretty sure he knows where it’s headed, so even before he’s finished enduring the rest of a long and miserable winter, even before he makes the trek back home for a week in March and basks in the peace and quiet of his _own_ room in his _own_ home, he’s expecting the phone call.

He’s seen it coming so when he dresses for their late-night rendezvous he doesn’t pick the fitted shirt and somewhat tighter trousers which Tanaka has never been able to help himself from oggling at. He sneaks out of his house in baggy shorts and one of his old Karasuno tees, and doesn’t even run his fingers through his hair to tidy it before they meet up along the banks of the stream, flooded with meltwater and as icy cold as his heart.

Spring flowers were in bloom for the start of their relationship, and there’s a kind of irony that they’re just starting to bloom again as it ends. But it’s fine, really it is. Chikara saw it coming, didn’t he? They tried it, tried to make it work. They had good times—some _really_ good times—but it was never going to last. It was never going to be a happily ever after because real life never works that way. _Chikara_ never works that way.

So he doesn’t cry when Tanaka wrinkles his forehead and bumbles his way towards the ultimatum. He smiles, and hugs his boyfriend one last time, and admits that he knows. They don’t have to spell it out. It’s fine. He’d rather stay friends, anyway, than make it ugly, and the strained relief in Tanaka’s face as he takes charge of their break-up is enough to make the lie worthwhile.

He goes home at the end of his week and starts year two of university, and honestly, it’s all good. The work is harder, the weeks fly faster, and really, when would he even have _time_ to miss anyone? His homesickness is less this year, and that has to be a good thing. Life’s fine. He’s fine. He checks his phone still out of reflex, nothing more, and sure as hell isn’t moping when he takes on an extra shift at work to eat up what little free time he has left in the week. He had a boyfriend for a while, and honestly, what more could he have asked for? The happy memories will last forever, even if the happiness itself didn’t.

 

* * *

 

Who’s he kidding. He’s not fine, not even remotely, but what did anyone expect? Just because Chikara knows how these things go, that doesn’t mean he escapes the messy, ugly, feelings part of it all.

Everyone can tell, which is probably the worst part, but at least they have the tact not to say anything. Besides, what are they _supposed_ to say? _Tanaka_ was the one to end it, not him. Sure, he’d gotten in and said his piece to make it mutual, and he _might_ have mentioned to Narita that he was thinking of trying to get in first—which had been met with a little surprise, thanks to Narita’s excess of faith in people—but it was Tanaka who called him. It was Tanaka who was fumbling with explanations of ‘needing space’ or that things ‘weren’t working’, not him.

It still fucking hurts, but the sole advantage with how it panned out is that no one can say he sabotaged things himself. Even if that’s exactly what he halfway wonders at night.

Tanaka never changed, after all. Tanaka carried on as normal and it was he, Chikara, who left. Who packed up and moved away and never really made enough effort to come home at the weekends. If he’d made it back for New Year would it have changed things? If he’d tried for a weekend now and then could he have been present enough in Tanaka’s life that he didn’t fade out of their relationship entirely?

Then again, Tanaka never made the damn effort to come and see _him_ , either. He was far from the only person on campus with a significant other back home, but the key difference seemed to be that other people made the trip. The days when he can see past his own self-esteem issues to blame Tanaka for what went wrong are rare, but cathartic when they happen. After everything, there’s something a little therapeutic about getting angry at the world. Suddenly some of Tanaka’s blow-ups start to make more sense. It turns out that yelling and screaming really _do_ help to release tension.

There's a temptation to call and tell him. To laugh over the phone that after all these years he finally understands, but that’s not how things work any more. You don’t call your ex to let him know you’re completely failing at getting over him, particularly not when you made out that it was all mutual and everything’s good.

He hasn’t called Tanaka _period_ since it happened. He’s not sure what to say. Sure, friends and all that…but are they? Are they really going to pretend they can go back to how it was before, when he only has to hear Tanaka’s name to remember how it feels to hold him? They’d seemed invincible, back then, even just for a little while.

Chikara tries to move on, really he does. The wallpaper on his phone—two pairs of feet in a tumbling stream—goes to show just how well he’s managing _that_. Months pass, and he can’t quite bring himself to change it, even though Tanaka never calls or messages either. Life sucks, and it’s going to keep on sucking until he can finally lay his failed relationship to rest, which doesn’t show any sign of happening in the near future. The world feels flat.

  

> _…Hey, remember that tyre?_

 

* * *

 

Chikara goes home for the August break against his better judgement, but living holed up in a shitty student flat while all his Uni friends are off visiting family sounds marginally worse than the chance of running into Tanaka at some stage. Tanaka works during the day, at least. He can just do whatever chores his parents want at that time, and drown his sorrows with cheap beer and garden volleyball in the evenings. Narita’s going to be home, they can get drunk together. He’ll buy, just in case Narita has any objections.

Yeah, well, there’s a downside to that plan, and that is the fact that somehow the Narita clan just grew _again_ , and his (somewhat unwilling) drinking partner is on permanent call to look after his new baby brother. Any drinking has to happen _there_ , instead of in the peace and quiet of Chikara's family’s home.

On the plus side, he and Tanaka never hung out at Narita’s for aforementioned sibling reasons, so the place is untainted by bad memories. On the negative—the _really_ negative side, the most direct route to get there means going past Tanaka’s house.

Walking is out of the question. Walking means taking his time and being approachable and, if the hour is late enough or on the weekends, walking means potentially being _seen_. He borrows his dad’s bike instead, dusting it off from its retirement in the shed and spending a whole afternoon at home oiling the moving parts and pumping up the tyres.

It’s a great idea, so it kinda sucks when, on his way home from the first evening drowning his sorrows at Narita’s in the company of a sometimes-squalling infant and too many other assorted siblings, the tyre he so carefully tended to the day before gives out entirely. He’s left walking _anyway_ , though at least the streets are dark by the time he makes his slightly wobbly way past the Tanaka household.

He doesn’t mean to look up, really he doesn’t, but the flat tyre snags on a rock in the road and the bike clatters out of his hands and at that point it’s just reflex kicking in, making sure no one peers out of a window and sees him. Odd, though. It’s pretty late but the only light is on in Saeko’s window. Oh well. Perhaps he’s at Noya’s.

It’s really none of his business what Tanaka is up to now, so he tries to ignore it when he’s cycling home the following night with a fresh, non-perished set of tyres on his dad’s bike and notices the light out again. It’s not on the night after that either, or for any of the seven days that follow, but that’s none of his business, is it. Anyway, he’s not looking. He’s not doing this. He’s better than stalking his ex…oh god, he’s going to end up stalking his ex, isn’t he. _Shit_.

The thing is, there’s a sort of sad inevitability to it all. In the same way that he realised his relationship was doomed months before the fatal conversation happened, he knows himself too well to believe he’s better than this. He is _absolutely_ the sort of sad, clingy asshole who is unable to move past this little oddity and get on with his life. It doesn’t matter that he and Tanaka were done with months ago. Something is going on, and for better or worse Chikara is curious now. Tanaka isn’t the sort of person to either stay out late somewhere else _or_ go to sleep so early that his lights would be out by…well, generally he passes by a little before midnight. In the years he’s known Tanaka, that bedroom light of his has been off at midnight roughly once in a blue moon.

And even more curious than that, as Chikara just _happens_ to be innocently passing by the house now and then over the next few days to do chores, or visit other friends and acquaintances he hasn’t seen in a while (some of them _years_ , in fact, so isn’t it absolutely the perfect time to start mending those bridges?), there doesn’t actually seem to be any sign of Tanaka coming and going from the house at all. Saeko’s car is parked up in the same general spot and seems to be in use, but Tanaka’s bike has grass growing between the spokes of the wheels. The bell is starting to look a little rusty, too.

That doesn’t make sense. Tanaka was using that bike _all the time_ the previous summer. Chikara has ridden between the handlebars on numerous occasions, the better to lean back and—

 _No_. No he’s not going there. He’s not doing this to himself. He’s not going to sink to this level, he’s going to move on with his life and… Oh who is he kidding. Chikara hasn’t moved on at all in over four months, and he’s certainly not starting now.

He _is_ starting to get curious about what’s going on, though. He’s not heard mention of Tanaka moving away on the grapevine, and they absolutely would have shared that sort of information with him. That means something else is happening.

Chikara has until the end of the summer break to work out what.

 


	2. Choose Your Own (Mis)Adventure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> _Day Two: **Summer** \- Orange - **Magic**_
> 
> * * *

The obvious thing to do with any mystery of this sort is just _ask_. He’s seen Saeko around town here and there, after all, and if anyone’s going to know where his ex is, it’s the person who has lived with and looked after him for pretty much his entire life.

Needless to say, that’s the last thing Chikara plans on doing.

It’s not that he’s _trying_ to make it harder for himself. It’s not even that he’s worried about what Saeko would have to say to him, because he and Tanaka parted on good terms, right? Asking how he’s doing because he is very _conspicuously_ absent is just normal behaviour for friends, surely.

Somehow though, he can’t help but feel like whatever is going on is weirder than that. And not just because he’s never fully shaken a tendency to view the entirety of his life like it’s some kind of demented tragi-comedy, either. The whole situation just doesn’t add up, and this time he has concrete evidence to back up his suspicions.

—Item One being Tanaka’s Instagram feed.

He feels a bit uncomfortable scrolling through it at first. Since the end of their relationship he’s left Tanaka muted, unwilling to go so far as blocking him outright—they’re meant to still be _friends_ , after all—but not up to seeing daily reminders of the way his life could have gone if he were less…well, _himself_. It’s hard to go through and see so many pictures of Tanaka smiling and grinning, the same as he’s ever been. Pictures of Tanaka at work, pictures of him in his old Karasuno gear on a training run, pictures of him in the kitchen with Saeko, dinner cooking in the background…

It takes Chikara a while to work it out. The pictures all look so _normal_ that it’s hard to tell, but when he stops idly skimming and starts scrutinising them in detail—which takes a little justifying to himself because honestly, he's not trying to be a creep about this—he notices something odd.

It’s Tanaka in all the pictures. Noya too, now and then, although far less so than he might otherwise expect. There’s even a few generic landscape or food pictures which seem to be a regular staple of Instagram feeds everywhere. So far, so normal, although less so for anyone who actually _knows_ Tanaka. Since when has the guy stopped to take pictures of food before shoving it down his gullet?

Here’s where it gets _really_ weird, though.

Tanaka’s wearing his Karasuno shirt in an alleged selfie, which Chikara can _easily_ tell because the writing isn’t reversed. He’s still wearing it in another jogging picture, except that in this picture, taken at the usual jaunty angle which comes of holding your phone in front of yourself while taking a quick snap, the lettering _is_ reversed. He’s had the same battered phone for years now, so they should be more consistent than that, right? Further back, Tanaka’s posing for a late-spring picture near the school with Noya. The date stamp declares it to be some time in May, but right in the top corner of the picture there’s what looks suspiciously like cherry blossom blooming on one of the blurry background trees.

Curious and frankly _bored_ , Chikara spends an entire morning cooped up in his bedroom with his phone, making notes of all the inconsistencies in Tanaka’s feed. They go back a _long_ way, but it’s not until he gets to the pictures from before their break-up that he realises just how suspicious the whole account really is.

There. Last September, a week or so after he’d gone back to University, Tanaka had posted a selfie on his way home from work. Stood astride his bike, jeering at the camera with the caption: _“Working week can suck it!!! #FridayRULES!!!”_

It wouldn’t really stick in his head as notable had he not seen the exact same picture and caption near the start of the feed, dated just three weeks ago.

The realisation sticks in his gut and twists. Chikara isn’t sure what to make of it. On the one hand, his suspicions _have_ to be correct. Something weird is going on with Tanaka, and even just going by the Instagram feed itself, no one else seems to have noticed. All of Tanaka’s recent posts have the same likes and comments as usual, and to be fair, he can’t say it’s all _that_ surprising. People who _haven’t_ been analysing the entire thing in one go would have no real reason to suspect what’s going on, after all. Who even remembers what pictures people shared a month ago, let alone almost a year?

The Instagram thing is almost enough on its own for Chikara to start calling people up so he can ask when they last actually saw Tanaka in person. But he’s already skirting pretty close to stalker territory—particularly as he’s been very transparently drowning his sorrows about their breakup in cheap beer and late-night children’s television with Narita for the last two weeks. If he’s going to start getting other people involved, however tangentially, he’s going to need more proof that this is more than just an extreme inability to let things go.

The only trouble is, getting more evidence of weirdness is probably going to mean pushing him over the edge into territory he _really_ can’t help but consider kinda creepy. Attempting to invade someone’s life like this rankles. It’s wrong. It’s offensive. He shouldn’t do it.

…On the other hand, something weird is going on, and it’s obviously been happening for a while. Tanaka’s Instagram feed might suggest to the casual viewer that he’s carrying on as normal, but there’s no sign of him at home, and Chikara has no way of knowing how many of the posts are either repeats or otherwise doctored in some way. ‘Selfies’ which have inconsistent mirroring are easy to spot. The same goes for the photos with inconsistent resolution, like they were taken with different phones, or backgrounds which don’t match the time of year they were meant to be taken.

But there are plenty of other posts which are much harder to call. How can he date a candid picture of Saeko in the kitchen, turning around and giving the camera the finger? She probably does the same thing every damn week. And what about pictures of food, or the other, more abstract pictures? They’re a little out of character perhaps but that doesn’t _prove_ anything. Too many are impossible to put into one column or another. He’s not even entirely sure how long this has been going on for, though he’d guess several months at least.

And, more to the point, why go to all that effort? Instagram doesn’t have a built-in queue function, and Tanaka has never been the sort of person to navigate technology long enough to work out how figure out a work-around. Besides, he’s too straightforward for that. If he was going to go somewhere, he’d just tell everyone. And if he’d vanished without telling anyone, Saeko and Noya would have raised so much fuss that no one could have missed it. No matter which way Chikara looks at the situation, it just doesn’t add up.

 

* * *

 

Chikara hasn’t quite dared speak to Noya since the break up. Sure, sure, it was amicable, but the end of any relationship is a tense, messy affair, no matter how good those intentions might have been to start with. And the way things panned out, he got Narita and Kinoshita in the divorce, so he can hardly object that Tanaka got Nishinoya.

Still, it leaves him wary—enough so that he elects to do the same drive-by technique to check on him that he’s been using at Tanaka’s house, instead of, say, actually calling him. Everyone’s been so busy since leaving school. Seeing each other all the time just isn’t what being an adult is all about.

It’s not an excuse. Nope, it’s just cold, slightly sad fact. And besides, it’d _definitely_ seem strange if he called Noya up out of the blue solely to ask after Tanaka’s whereabouts. It’s safer and less creepy by far for him to stay out of sight and check on Noya to see if he’s acting oddly at all. Yep.

…The plan backfires somewhat when he makes his slow but steady way along the street and reaches Noya’s house only to find an entirely different family living there instead. A family car is parked outside along with a young child’s pink bicycle, and even as he watches a strange cat makes its way along the path and leaps up onto a windowsill before squeezing its way inside. Chikara is so shocked he comes to a complete halt, and barely saves himself from falling off his bike.

He comes to just in time to put a foot down, but the pedal catches his shin and in biting back a cry of pain he lets go of the handlebars. They twist and collide against the body of the bike with a clatter. Wincing, Chikara grabs them again and hurriedly makes his way off along the street before anyone catches him staring. That’s all he’d need.

The bruise smarts, certainly, and when he pulls his chinos up there’s enough of an egg that he’s fairly sure it’ll have set his entire lower leg aching severely by the morning, but past that initial investigation Chikara hardly even notices the pain. Noya’s _gone?_ How?

Here’s the thing. If the circumstances surrounding Tanaka’s mysterious disappearance don’t make any sense, the fact of Noya’s is enough to set him wondering if it’s all some fever dream or the result of a head injury he can’t remember. Quite frankly, it’s impossible.

It’s not just the fact that between them, when left to their own devices Tanaka and Noya have roughly the academic competence of a fourteen-year-old. Nor is it the fact that neither one of them has ever shown the least bit of inclination to leave the town unless it was for a volleyball tournament. It’s not even Chikara’s certainty that they couldn’t possibly plan to leave town without telling literally _everyone_ , multiple times, whether those people wanted to hear it or not.

No, the problem is this: Tanaka and Nishinoya between them don’t even have the _imagination_ required to cook up whatever kind of hare-brained cover scheme they’re running, let alone the competence. And even if Chikara could somehow work his way round to believing that they might have tried, there’s definitely no room in his mind for the notion that they could have succeeded.

Because this is his new list of Highly Suspect things the pair seem to have pulled off:

  * —Ditching town for at least a couple of months to go who knows where, without telling anyone what they were planning in advance.
  * —Manipulating not one but _two_ Instagram feeds to give the illusion that they’re still in town. Chikara has checked, and the pair of them even match up, step for step. It’s unnerving.
  * —Managing to convince everyone that nothing odd is going on, despite transparently not being in town any more or attending any of the more recent neighbourhood association practices and matches. And this is a fact Chikara knows because he’s gone to the trouble of checking each and every member’s social media across multiple platforms, and the pair of them are absent week after week. (It’s not a weird thing to do. Much.)
  * —Selling _Nishinoya’s family home_ to outsiders without this raising any attention in a small town where gossip spreads faster than infectious diseases.
  * —Somehow convincing Saeko not to cry blue murder about any of the above, which honestly has to be by far the most impressive item on the whole damn list.



In fact the more Chikara starts nosing around town, the shadier everything seems to be. There’s obviously no sign of Tanaka at his former place of work, and yet there are…for want of a better word _remnants_ of him everywhere. There’s a calendar on the wall of the office which Chikara remembers buying at New Year, and a slot for him on the old-fashioned time sheet by the staff entrance.

Chikara doesn’t go quite so far in his investigation as to actually break in at night and check through the rota books, but it’s honestly a close-run thing. Tanaka’s uncle isn’t a bad person, but he’s a businessman first and foremost, not a charity case. That was half the problem over the year they were together, wasn’t it? Tanaka could never get the time off to visit.

He resists the urge to be petty and enact some small act of vandalism on the place—and _not_ because he suspects the place is charmed to high heaven, either. It wasn’t the fact Tanaka had a _job_ which had ruined their relationship.

_It was probably the reason he didn’t get bored sooner, if anything_. A depressing thought, perhaps, but he’s allowed to wallow. He’s searched all over town and he’s no closer to working out what’s going on than when he started. And that means there’s only one avenue left for him to pursue if he wants to keep going. It’s not something he relishes.

Talking to Saeko was intimidating enough when he and Tanaka were _together_. It’s a hundred times more daunting now.

 

* * *

 

He waits until the following afternoon to stop by the Tanaka household. Saeko has never been a mornings person and the timing also gives him the option of bailing to Narita’s house if it all goes wrong.

It’s got nothing to do with nerves. Nothing at all.

This close, stood by the door, it’s even more obvious that something is weirdly off about the place. The house has never been what you’d call spotless, but even more weeds than Chikara can remember are growing here and there. There’s no immediate bellow for someone to get the door—and much as he hadn’t been expecting one with Tanaka… well, wherever it is he’s actually gone, it feels wrong.

It feels even more wrong when Saeko answers the door and smiles gently at him, mind elsewhere to judge from looking at her.

“Oh, hi Chikara,” she says after a half second of staring past him. “How are you doing? Come in, come in!”

He’s about to refuse but she’s already ushering him inside, and this _was_ sort of what he came here for, right? It’s _got_ to be easier to bring up the subject inside, rather than standing on the doorstep where anyone could overhear them.

Then again, safe on the doorstep where anyone could overhear them, she’s less likely to chew him out for breaking her poor little brother’s heart or something, because honestly she gave him that talk right at the beginning and he is fully prepared to believe that she’ll see it through, regardless of whether or not Tanaka actually needs her too. On second thought, coming here was a terrible mistake and Chikara _really_ ought to have known better.  
  
“So how’s university treating you?” she asks after leading him into the kitchen, waving him over to the dining table to sit down. She stays standing herself.

Chikara pauses a moment, waiting for the lunge at his innards which doesn’t happen. “It’s…uh…fine,” he says, looking around. The kitchen is achingly familiar, and not just from the previous summer. Plenty of school cramming sessions took place here over the years, with Saeko peering in now and then purely to—in Chikara’s opinion at least—boast that she no longer had to study.

The reply is a nod, and a distracted smile. “I expect your parents are proud and that, right?” she says. “Oh, don’t mind me, I have to get the dinner on. You should stay a while, though! It’s been so long since I saw you, ya know?”

“O-oh, I couldn’t possibly—” Chikara begins, but Saeko has already turned to the fridge and started pulling out food. From the amount of vegetables she has in her hand, she’s not taking no for an answer.

She doesn’t even look back at him for long minutes after that, apparently too busy clearing the leftover dishes from the sink and starting to chop things. Chikara makes a few aborted attempts at conversation, but the only response he gets are odd hums and absentminded syllables.

It’s weird. It’s weird and _creepy_ , and if he weren’t already looking down the barrel of a mystery which bears all the signs of taking up his entire summer break (and possibly longer, if he’s honest), he’d be starting to make notes on this particular bit of strangeness too. Even his _grandmother_ isn’t as absent-minded as Saeko looks right now, and she’s in her nineties.

A thought strikes, and it’s all he can do not to bolt from the house. The hairs go up on the back of his neck.

_It has to be though,_ he thinks, watching as Saeko sets about preparing enough food to feed an army. _Tanaka disappears and Saeko doesn’t pull the town to shreds looking for him? Someone—some_ thing _has got to her so she won’t raise a fuss._

“Have you seen Tana— _Ryuu?_ ” he asks, just about remembering in time that if he wants to get Saeko on-side it’s probably not a good idea to let her know that the relationship between him and her little brother had deteriorated to the point where he was no longer on first-name terms.

Saeko lifts her head and lowers the knife, and for the briefest second Chikara can see a flicker in her expression. It’s gone before he can truly pin the emotion down, though, returning to its previous vacancy. “Oh, he’s…things are good, yeah,” she says dreamily, turning back to the vegetables. “Can’t complain.”

 

* * *

 

So. Life changing moments. They come along now and then, and they’re sort of like a cosmic fork in the road—no U-turns allowed. You pick a path, and wave goodbye forever to the other option, never even getting to know what it might have been, or where it would have led.

 

> _Almost never, anyway. But that’s besides and ahead of the point._

 

* * *

 

The _important_ thing is that as Chikara is stood there, busy dithering over what to do with himself now that Saeko has gone back to preparing food, it strikes him that he has a couple of options. He _could_ sit down, keep prodding Saeko with questions, and hope that even if she doesn’t have answers, the gaps she leaves open will be the sort he can fill in.

_Or_ —and this is the part which has him clearing his throat as a test and noting with satisfaction that she doesn’t even look up—he could take advantage of her flagrantly altered state of mind and try investigating Tanaka’s room for more concrete clues.

“I’m, uh…I just need to…”

She doesn’t even nod or hum a reply as he edges his way out of the room. Chikara makes a note to try and look up what sort of spell or enchantment could do that when he gets back home, and darts up the stairs. He doesn’t especially think she’ll notice at this point—idly he wonders if she’s addled enough that she’ll even forget he stopped by—but there’s no sense taking chances.

 

* * *

 

 

> _The irony of that last thought is_ absolutely _going to come back and haunt him later on._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this was disastrously late, but I'm back from the Discworld Convention now and hopefully that's the last of the major, going-away obligations I have. Looking forward to getting back into writing regularly again!


	3. Finding Answers (Which I Hate)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> _Day Three: Autumn - **Yellow** \- **Kiss**_
> 
> * * *

It’s been several months since he last entered Tanaka’s bedroom. Scratch that, it’s been almost a full year already, because the last time he’d had a chance had been during the summer—during _that_ summer. The one perfect part of their time together, back before everything had, frankly, gone to shit. Back when he’d still had hope and optimism about their future together. Back before reality had asserted itself.

It shouldn’t be so difficult to walk in. The door is closed, but he knows Tanaka isn’t there. If he _had_ been there, he’d have come out already, even if it were just to throw Chikara onto the street and tell him to retire, similarly, from his whole life. There’s no one here. No one inside.

…Well, that’s the whole problem, isn’t it. Going into someone else’s room when they’re inviting you in or already there is a very different prospect to waltzing in when they aren’t around, even if you are _transparently_ doing it for their own benefit. And it really is for Tanaka’s benefit he’s doing this. He’s a concerned friend, and he wants to know what happened. _Okay_ , so he has a few more additional motives in play as well, but at the heart of it all he still cares about Takana, and wants to make sure he’s alright.

And really, that’s what’s made the last few months so damn painful, isn’t it?

He halts, hand on the doorframe, and lets his head droop forward until it connects softly with the wood. He _does_ care. He cares a lot. Altogether too much given the circumstances, but he’s always been a lost cause in this respect. It’s impossible _not_ to care about Tanaka. How could anyone know him and not want him to be safe and happy? How could anyone take a chance on never seeing that smile again, or feeling those arms draping casually across a shoulder to pull whoever they landed on into a hug?

How the hell did he let Tanaka break up with him, let _alone_ take the final step himself?

Well, introspection and second thoughts might be the curse of his existence, but they’re no use at the moment. What he needs is to push them aside for a bit and find out what’s going on _now_. He can worry about his latest string of mistakes when this is all over with. Perhaps he’ll even have enough of the summer left to hole up in his room and finish a few more rounds of self-pity.

 

* * *

 

 The room is dusty. That’s the first thing he notices. Except it’s _not_ , not really, but seeing as the first thing he _actually_ notices is a pile of dirty clothes in the corner, he feels fairly safe in letting himself believe the first thing is the dust. No one wants to admit that they walked into their ex’s bedroom months after breaking up, and the first thing to catch their attention was a pile of unwashed boxers and socks.

The second thing is the mess, which isn’t top of the list purely because it’s entirely expected, but does make a solid second because the moment he stops to look at it properly he realises it’s the wrong _sort_ of mess. It’s not Tanaka’s stuff piled up in heaps here and there—it’s Noya’s.

Now _that_ is something pretty darn curious and even more suspicious, so before Saeko has a chance to wonder at how long he’s taking in the bathroom (if she even remembers that he’s here—she’d seemed pretty close to forgetting about him when he’d been stood in the same room as her, after all), he steps in and closes the door.

Time to investigate _properly_.

Noya’s belongings have been stashed here quickly, he can tell that much. They’re not so much piled in place as they are _dumped_ , half of them spread across the bed as though they’d been rifled through. Given the pile of laundry in the corner of the room it’s obvious that Saeko hasn’t been in here for a long time. Probably not since Tanaka and Noya pulled their disappearing act, which means the pair of them must have been the ones who left it in this state.

It looks like fully half of Nishinoya’s wardrobe is spread out across the sheets of Tanaka’s bed, and there are magazines and bits of sports gear heaped on the floor beside the bed which belong to him as well. Knee pads and elbow guards; assorted shirts with familiar slogans; his old libero uniform left as a bright orange puddle by the table they used to sit around to study.

The first conclusion Chikara draws is an obvious one—wherever Tanaka and Nishinoya have gone, they left _together_ , the same way they must have planned it all. The fact that so many of Noya’s belongings are stashed in Tanaka’s room can’t possibly be coincidence. He’s not sure what it means for the rest of the Nishinoya family, but Yuu, at the very least, must be planning to come back at some point.

Presumably that means _both_ of them are too, which would be rather more encouraging if there were any clues as to when that point might be. He quickly scans through boxes of memorabilia, dismissing them out of hand as a jumble of assorted rubbish Nishinoya apparently considered valuable enough not to send wherever it is the rest of his family and their possessions have gone. It’s not all that much, considering Noya’s bedroom had always looked somewhat like a rummage sale. Some rolled up posters, a few notebooks, trinkets and knick-knacks he remembers seeing on the windowsill the few times he visited Nishinoya’s room.

Had they left in a hurry? It would explain some things, but not others. If they were rushed, surely they wouldn’t have had the time to set up such an airtight cover story. No, there must be something more deliberate going on, and if Nishinoya’s belongings don’t hold the answer, perhaps Tanaka’s might.

 

* * *

 

Chikara feels a little guilty about the prospect, he can’t lie. If his parents ever found out what he was getting up to there’s every chance they would disown him. But this is more important—there’s too much at stake to feel awkward, so he pushes past the nagging sense that he’s _invading_ , and pulls open the top drawer in Tanaka’s desk.

The first thing which leaps into view is an adult magazine, which he probably ought to have expected if he were honest with himself. Subtle has never been a word which featured all that heavily in Tanaka’s vocabulary, and ‘self-restraint’ is probably unfamiliar to him entirely. No doubt it has never occurred to the other man to be a little more discrete about his masturbatory habits. He doesn’t quite dare to lift it and see what’s concealed underneath. The situation isn’t _that_ desperate.

The second drawer proves more fruitful, housing a variety of what looks at first like junk. Pens and pencils and other assorted stationery have lingered since Karasuno, along with keyrings, bottle openers, crumpled receipts, a selection of scattered trading cards… Chikara reaches into the drawer to sift through the contents carefully but without all that much interest until his fingers close around a familiar object.

He pulls it out of the drawer and _stares_. It’s not large, just about big enough to sit neatly in his palm—a tatty, halfway flattened piece of origami which just about looks like a bird if you hold it at the right angle and squint slightly. He remembers making it on the train home from Tokyo that March, too worked up over the break-up he knew was coming to sit through the journey without something to occupy his mind and fingers lest he chew the latter into oblivion. In fact, he’d probably made about a dozen of the things.

He’d given it to Tanaka as a peace offering the night they’d broken up, and not thought about it since. It had been a pretty pointless gesture. What sort of idiot handed over a weird token of friendship at a time like that? Honestly, he’d expected Tanaka to just drop it there and then, because honestly what purpose did it serve other than a reminder of the relationship they had both agreed they didn’t want any more?

But here it is, a little more tatty and worn than he remembers, or than could be accounted for by having been shoved in the back of a drawer for five months or so. He sets it down on the desk, frowning, then looks back down into the drawer and goggles. There’s a hint of yellow peeking back up at him between a crumpled bit of tissue and some old receipts, and it’s even more familiar than the origami crow.

The omamori buried in the drawer is somewhat older, battered and worn, with one corner of the fabric worn away and the design on the front faded by sunlight and rain. It’s old and useless—any power it once possessed has long since run out—but it was the first gift Chikara ever bought Tanaka, back when he’d arrived in Tokyo and spent a day wandering around. Half joke, half serious, he’d brought it back to Miyagi during golden week, telling Tanaka as he handed it over that, seeing as his boyfriend had survived school and almost reached adulthood, presumably his luck and health were going to stand by him, but with the disastrous mastery of numbers that he had, he’d need all he help anyone could get to be a financial success.

Tanaka had laughed, loud and passionate and free, clutching it in one hand and draping an arm across Chikara’s shoulder.

“But I’ve got you,” he’d pointed out. “I don’t need an omamori to bring me wealth. I’m already the richest guy in the world, right?”

Chikara had rolled his eyes then. “That is the most appalling line I’ve ever—”

He was cut off though, stopped mid-sentence by Tanaka pressing their lips mostly together—landing the kiss slightly off-centre and getting a fair bit of cheek in there as well—then pulling back to straighten up.

“—had the—” Chikara had gone on, determined to make his point, but Tanaka was too quick for him to get more than a couple of words out before they were kissing again, lined up perfectly this time but in some danger of toppling backward thanks to Tanaka’s arm scooping around his lower back and pulling him close.

“—misfortune—” Chikara got out as they paused for breath, letting one foot shuffle back so he didn’t actually fall over.

“—to hear,” he finally finished some minutes later, cheeks red and lips almost certainly redder, hands tightly gripping Tanaka’s shirt.

“You done yet?” Tanaka had asked, grinning smugly.

“Not even remotely,” Chikara had replied, reaching up to grab his collar and yank him back down.

 

* * *

 

Of course, the thing about memories cropping up unexpectedly is that they tend to hit twice as hard. It’s all the more inconvenient an experience when you’re snooping around your ex-boyfriend’s bedroom while his magically manipulated sister has presumably forgotten your entire existence downstairs.

All in all, it’s understandable that Chikara takes a moment, blinking back what are absolutely _not_ tears.

 

* * *

 

It’s stupid, really, that it even matters to him. He’s not here to reminisce, he’s here to work out what’s going on, but for some reason the sight of that little yellow pouch is like a punch in the stomach. Why had Tanaka kept it? It’s well over a year old at this point, and although there was no way he could have returned it to the shrine, there wasn’t any need to leave it in his bedroom once he stopped wearing it on his backpack, the way he had been the entire summer they’d spent together.

But it’s here, as is the dumb origami bird, and as he rummages through the draw, he finds photos of them together; a piece of wrapper which he remembers from the Valentine’s gift he’d had to post up to Miyagi in February; and the first (and to be fair, only) letter he sent from Tokyo, way back when he’d moved into his student accommodation. The letter has been opened but is still tucked in the original envelope. When he pulls it out the paper is worn and dog-eared—the sort of wear which can only come from having been read over and over again.

Chikara’s hands are shaking a little as he stuffs everything back into the drawer and slams it shut. There’s no reason for Tanaka to have kept _any_ of this. Granted, the second drawer looks a little like the sort of place where all his junk ends up, but that doesn’t explain how much of it he still has. How many mementos he’s kept of a relationship which he’d openly stated wasn’t working; that he wanted to get away from, in fact.

 _Focus_ , he tells himself. _This isn’t helping_.

But isn’t it? Tanaka kept all those things, put them safely in a drawer, and while it’s entirely unsurprising that early relationship trinkets might still be there, how does that explain the latter ones? If they’d been winding their way down to a point of supposedly mutual disinterest in each other, why was Tanaka still holding on to what was, frankly, fairly meaningless junk? Come on, a _chocolate wrapper?_ He’d only sent the gift out of a halfway desperate attempt to pretend there was still something between them despite the growing evidence to the contrary, and yet here it is, nestled among things which might have held _real_ sentimental value.

“I’m not doing this,” he mutters, wincing at how loud even that sounds in the otherwise silent room. “This isn’t what I’m here for.”

Clues, he needs _clues_ , not heartache. But the more he searches the harder it is to stop thinking about it. The whole room is filled with Tanaka’s personality, after all. Clothes, a few books, piles of magazines and posters on the walls. Some things are glaring in their absence. His wardrobe is far emptier than it ought to be, and the jacket which normally lies draped over the back of the chair is gone as well. So is Tanaka’s rucksack, which he’d kept even after leaving school because it was handy to take a spare change of clothes to he potions factory.

Clues as to where Tanaka might actually have _gone_ , however, seem to be missing along with clothes and the electric torch which Tanaka had always kept on his desk. It’s all very well knowing that Tanaka had packed plenty of things to take with him wherever he went, but honestly Chikara could have worked that one out on his own. The sum total of what he’s learnt, in fact, makes for a decidedly unimpressive list:

  * — Something is _seriously_ wrong with Saeko, because she doesn’t seem to realise that Tanaka hasn’t been home in weeks, maybe even months.
  * — Nishinoya’s belongings have been stashed in the room, presumably because whatever was done to Saeko has ensured she either won’t check on the room or won’t notice the difference if she does.
  * — The trip was planned enough that Tanaka took a wide range of clothes, mostly sportswear but including his winter coat.
  * — Despite being the one who called time on their relationship, Tanaka has kept almost every sentimental memento of their relationship which Chikara was responsible for in the year they were together, all tucked safely in a drawer.



He feels a little silly counting that last point. There’s every chance it has a completely uninteresting explanation like laziness, but there’s something about the way the larger picture ties together which makes him think it’s significant. It _can’t_ just be desperation which has him wondering if, just maybe, Tanaka was trying to break things off because he already knew he’d have to skip town with Nishinoya.

Okay, so it’s absolutely wishful thinking, and he doesn’t shy away from admitting it to himself as he makes one last pointless circuit of the room. No one ever said he wasn’t a lost cause. In fact, Narita has spent the last week or so giving him very strong hints in that direction. But he’s allowed to dream. Something weird is going on, isn’t it? It’s not a crime for him to idly dream of Tanaka missing him as much as he misses—

It’s almost inevitable that Chikara should spot the envelope as he’s walking out of the room, shaking his head with resignation. There’s a double take as he looks back, sure he must have imagined it. Tanaka has never been one for either writing or receiving letters, but it’s there all the same, halfway tucked behind a poster next to the door, with his own name written on the envelope in Tanaka’s entirely unmistakable handwriting.

* * *

  

> _For Chikara -_
> 
> _I wrote this for you. I’m sorry I never sent it! I meant to. I meant to do a lot of stuff, but then it got complicated, and I didn’t have time, and I dunno how much I’ve explained to you because I’m leaving this here before the rest just in case I don’t get time later, but I’m gonna lay it all out straight before I go, so I hope I did a good job and you didn’t get too mad._
> 
> _If you got given this version, with this note, I guess the protection on Saeko wore off already and she found it, so it’s been a while since you heard anything. They said it might happen. That we might get stuck. But I swear Chikara, if I did, I didn’t mean to! I want to come back. I want to see you again. Shit, I’m gonna miss you so much. I don’t want to think about getting stuck and not getting to come home. I’ll do good though! I’ll be back before you know it, and then you won’t have to read this at all._
> 
> _Right. Gotta go!_
> 
> _Ryuu_

 

* * *

  

> _Chikara_
> 
> _So, this is a pretty weird thing. I never did letters before, but man, when yours arrived it was like getting a bit of you in the post, and it feels good. I want to do the same. I want to get this right! You deserve it._
> 
> _Course, I’m not really good at this stuff. I, er, asked Saeko about it and she said to just write what I was thinking. So here goes! I’m gonna be the best boyfriend for you Chikara. I’ll do anything._
> 
> _I miss you. Man, it’s only been a few weeks and I already really miss you. Going to work each day, and then coming home…I thought it’d all be fine but all the days drag, you know? It’s not hard like university or anything, but it’s not what I expected._
> 
> _It’s not the same without you. It’s taken me a few days now to get this letter written, and I had time to think, and that’s the problem, right there. It’s gonna keep on being hard all the while you’re away. I just have to get on with it though, like you. Because it’s worth the wait. You’re worth the wait._
> 
> _You’re worth writing letters for, and I never thought I’d do this! I’d be anything for you though. Always._
> 
> _Is this long enough? It’s taken me ages to write it but it feels short. I tried three times already and threw those letters away because they weren’t good enough. I got a feeling about this one though._
> 
> _Ha! That was like how you write letters just there. Guess you’re rubbing off on me already. ~~-I wish I could rub-~~_
> 
> _Er, never mind that last bit. Point is, I’ll write more letters if you want. Anything for you._
> 
> _Ryuu_

 

* * *

 

Time skips sometimes. It’s an oddity of nature, how it slips past without notice, the brain too caught up in something to register the seconds as they work their way from now into then. It’s like every cliche movie scene, where the clock speeds up or the leaves mysteriously all pick the same moment to flutter down, and the seasons roll past—

Well. Not quite seasons. But certainly one minute Chikara is sitting down on Tanaka’s bed to spare his suddenly-weak knees, and the next it’s getting a little dark out and he’s read both the original letter and its accompanying note so many times he’s sure they’re etched permanently on his retinas.

What the fuck. What the _fuck_.

 

* * *

 

…Oh like _hell_ is this gonna be the end of it all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen. I swear I'm gonna fix it. I _swear_.
> 
> Come scream at me on [Tumblr](https://tottwritesfanfic.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TottWritesFic)!


	4. Making (Questionable) Choices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> _Day Four: Winter - Green - **College**_
> 
> * * *

There are a few troubles which Chikara runs into with his Grand Plan, some of which strike him immediately. The others creep up on him that night as he’s lying awake unable to sleep—but more on that later.

First and foremost, however, is the fact that he doesn’t actually have a Grand Plan at all. What he _has_ , if he’s ruthlessly honest with himself, is a Grand Daydream, or possibly a Grand Idea-Of-A-Plan if he’s feeling a little more generous. He’s not feeling particularly generous though, and it’s for a reason which strikes him almost straight away, long before he can make a tactical retreat from the Tanaka household.

The reason is this: he still has no idea where Tanaka has gone, _why_ he has gone, or even when he left. There’s no point even pinning it down to ‘after they broke up’, because what if (and, granted, he’s getting into conspiracy theory territory with this one) it wasn’t actually _Tanaka_ who arranged that meeting, but some sort of simulacrum or clone or something?

…Okay, so he can probably leave that theory out of the version of events he’s planning on telling Narita at their daily sorrows-drowning session, but it’s still a _possibility_ , however remote. And it still gives him a moment’s panic that he’s spent the last few months telling all and sundry that he’s single when there’s a chance (however slight) that the Tanaka he broke up with wasn’t even Tanaka at all.

The panic passes pretty readily though. The more rational—but no less gut-wrenching—theory is that the discussion Tanaka mentioned in his letter was their breakup. That it was actually  _meant_ to be an explanation of what was going on. That perhaps Chikara was a little too hasty in getting in first. Except hang it all, that doesn’t particularly make sense _either_ , because honestly Tanaka was pretty clear about where he was going with that conversation, and mysterious voyages into the unknown were definitely not marked in the programme. He was being _textbook_ about the fact that fundamentally things weren’t working. He’d even used those words!

Chikara reads both letters again as he heads home, after charming the bike to steer itself. It’s technically illegal, but so is brainwashing your older sister and Tanaka didn’t seem to have any qualms about doing _that_ , so at this point in the proceedings he’s not quite prepared to care any more.

What can he work out from the clues left behind? Not a whole lot if he’s honest with himself, which is the second major stumbling block in his Grand Plan. It’s all very well telling himself that he’s going to get to the bottom of it all (and also drag Tanaka back from whatever misadventure he’s gotten himself and Noya caught up in—by the collar if necessary), but if he’s going to stand a hope in any kind of hell of doing so, it would probably help if he started by learning what had actually _happened_.

He’s never been any good at tracking spells, so that instantly rules out the most obvious solution. And besides, there’s that line in Tanaka’s letter about getting ‘stuck’, which is highly suspicious and makes him wonder if there’s even a simple way _to_ track them. If he’d pursued more traditionally magical studies he might have had an advantage there, but he’s always focused more on getting through his degree, which hasn’t really had a lot of need for skills along those lines.

Magic is useful for making films, yes. But that’s something which special effects people worry about, not writers and directors. He’s learnt about how to _integrate_ it into a film, but always with a view towards eventually telling someone: “Ah, yes, if you could just set things up over there, that would be wonderful.”

Even his backup career plans have been more focused on business studies and literature, and there’s not a whole lot of practical magic in those fields, either. Well—possibly there will be in the third year, because for the life of him he can’t imagine anyone getting through a future in business management _without_ resorting to runes and charms, and most likely minor forays into demon summoning and ritual sacrifice too. But literally none of that helps him with his current predicament, which is this:

  * —His ex-boyfriend is missing, presumed stupidly over-involved in highly suspicious circumstances.
  * —Most likely they are of magical origin, but there’s really no way of proving even _that_ much about it all.
  * —The only person who might have been able to tell him something about what’s going on has had her mind altered so that she has no idea any of this is happening.
  * —There’s every chance he and Tanaka broke up thanks to a stupid _misunderstanding_.



The fact that he can’t help but feel as though the last point is the worst of them all goes to show just how well Chikara has his priorities down. Or rather, how well he _doesn’t_ , but Chikara is self-aware enough to not be especially surprised by this turn of events. He’s never claimed to be a particularly good person, after all, and he’s allowed to feel a bit of self-pity now and then. Besides, if Tanaka had actually _told_ him what was going on, perhaps things would never have gotten bad enough for him to disappear in the first place. Maybe they could have worked something out together?

It’s a pretty pointless and desperate train of thought. He can admit that to himself, willingly enough. But it’s always better to have _something_ to cling to than nothing at all.

 

* * *

 

Chikara is an intelligent, rational young man not prone to panic, and therefore it is an entirely sensible course of action for him to plan out all the things which could go wrong with confiding in Narita as he cycles over to his friend’s house that evening, wrestling with his bike while the last of the self-steering charm wears off.

Possibly as a result of this, it takes a while to build up to the topic. It’s absolutely _not_ because he’s desperately clinging to the still-new and not entirely concrete prospect that perhaps— _just_ perhaps—Tanaka might not have wanted to end their relationship quite so definitely as he had previously supposed.

The conversation starts as much of their previous iterations have: Narita opens a couple of beers, and settles his much-smaller and _far_ louder sibling into the bouncer it occupies for roughly ninety percent of its waking life, before flicking the television over to something quiet and soothing.

“You look happier, sort of,” Narita says, and there’s a degree of apprehension in his expression as he speaks, which is explained by the second half of his sentence: “Or maybe just thoughtful? Preoccupied? Did something happen today?”

Chikara groans, and holds the beer awkwardly, nose wrinkling.

“Have I been that bad?” he asks. “I don’t think I’ve been _that_ —”

“You’ve been that bad,” Narita confirms. “I was going to call for backup in a day or two. This?” He gestures between them, eyeing the bottles of beer. “It’s not _healthy_ , you know?”

“What do you mean ‘not healthy’? I’ve just been…okay so I’ve been moping a little, but that’s all!”

Narita sighs, and rests his beer on the floor beside him. “Listen, you have to be honest with yourself. This hasn’t just been a bit of moping. I know…I know it’s been hard for you, but you’ve got to start moving on at some point. I mean, okay, so Tanaka was breaking it off, but _you_ were the one who got in first.”

“Yeah,” Chikara says, staring down the narrow neck of the beer bottle as though the brown glass holds some kind of answer for him. “Um, about that. I think I might have been wrong.”

This time Narita’s sigh is longer, drawn out and strained, and followed by a thoughtful silence before Narita meets Chikara’s eyes and starts talking:

“Listen. I don’t mind being your shoulder to lean on, or some moral support, but this can’t carry on forever, you know? You must have had some level of acceptance at the time or you wouldn’t have handled it like you did. It’s as though you’ve been going backwards since then, and it’s only been worse now that you’re home again. I’m offering my help here, but I feel as though you’re not actually listening—to me _or_ yourself. It’s got to stop.”

The thought hits Chikara very suddenly: _Oh_ shit _, this is an intervention._

There’s a half-second where he very much expects Kinoshita to materialise out of the shadows, complete with further moral grandstanding about how he’s only harming himself, and to be fair he has enough self-awareness to see where this is coming from. From an outside perspective, he really hasn’t been coping all that well at all. Hell, from an _inside_ perspective he really hasn’t either, and that’s only been compounded by the mystery of the last week or so—which of course, Narita knows nothing about.

This is the point where he fixes that. Assuming Narita is still willing to listen of course, and not write him off as overly-obsessed. It’s a real enough possibility that Chikara goes right on ahead and makes things worse as he replies:

“No, no, just hear me out, okay?”

Because that doesn’t sound desperate, not at all.

Narita picks up his beer again, and gives the baby bouncer a nudge with his foot to set it rocking up and down. “I’m your friend,” he says heavily. “You know I’m going to listen. But I still mean what I said. I can’t keep sitting here like this while you stew on stuff that’s over and done.”

“I’m not stewing any more,” Chikara says, but it’s sort of a half-lie really, and he suspects by Narita’s expression that this much is obvious. If he’s honest, he probably deserves the scepticism.

There’s no help for that but to push on, though: “It’s… When was the last time you saw Tanaka? I mean, _actually_ saw him, face to face. Even just in passing.”

Narita frowns. “I’m not sure, probably quite a while ago now? I don’t really see what you’re getting at though. It’s not as though I’ve been keeping track. He’s at work a lot, and I have classes during the day, and we never really stayed all that much in contact after you…well. You know.”

“Yeah but he’s _not_ at work—I checked,” Chikara says, realising only after the words come out that he’s _really_ not painting all that great a picture of himself. “I mean—I mean I have to cycle past his house every night to get home, okay? And his light’s never on, and then his Instagram feed… Okay, okay, so I know this looks bad, but I’m telling you he’s skipped town, and so has Noya, even though they’re somehow both pretending they’re still here!” He pauses a moment, taking in Narita’s expression. “I’m just making this sound worse, aren’t I.”

The expression on Narita’s face is somewhere halfway between a cringe and an attempt at looking regretful. He holds it a few seconds while obviously looking for appropriate words, but ultimately plumps for:

“You really are, yeah.”

 

* * *

 

There’s a funny thing about making a big, important decision with your life, and it is this: no one else knows. Quite often, no one else even cares, unless you give them a reason to. They have their own problems to keep them occupied with. And that can be hard to keep in mind sometimes, particularly while you’re in the middle of a crisis which seems too large to be invisible from the outside. Perspective requires distance, after all.

All of which is to say that, really and truly, Chikara’s decisions all make perfect sense at the time.

 

 

> _…Hindsight? Not so much._

 

* * *

 

Chikara pedals fast as he races home. Well, screw Narita anyway; who needs him. Who needs _anyone_ —he can fix this himself. He just has to get somewhere he can do some research, that’s all. He’s got a basic understanding of the _concept_ of tracking spells. It can’t be that hard, can it? All he’s got to do is look up the method and there’s plenty of opportunity to do so at home.

Although the problem is, he’s heading home far earlier than he normally does of an evening and that means his parents are still awake when he gets back, the better to rope him into discussions he just doesn’t have the heart for. Who cares that he only has a couple of years left as a student, or that he “ought to start thinking about his life post-university” already? He’s not going to set aside his film career dreams without _trying_ them at least, and that’s what he can see his mother and father trying to steer towards, however delicately they might have started out framing it.

He can see where the rest of his break is headed too, and it’s mired in unnecessary drama. His mother will keep ‘stumbling across’ job openings in Sendai to inspire him—which would be fine if he were actually _looking_ to move to Sendai after university—and his father is going to want to have another excruciatingly embarrassing talk about eventually settling down. They mean well, really they do, but they don’t particularly understand him at all.

Chikara tosses and turns in bed at the ludicrously early bedtime of half past ten, and has nothing to do but think about his life and where it’s currently headed. The answers he comes up with are not particularly encouraging.

He’s just had all but an argument with his one major confidante about getting over his ex-boyfriend, and now he’s left to work out how to patch things up by himself—which would be a daunting enough prospect even if said ex-boyfriend _weren’t_ missing, presumed ‘stuck’. Whatever  _that_ means. All he’s really got to go on now is his Grand Plan, and that’s not a particularly reassuring thought any more.

The first problem with his Grand Plan is the rather obvious (and fundamentally damning) lack of the actual _plan_ part. He’d worked on that one throughout the day, sure, getting so far as to decide that he needs to work on tracking spells…but what then? Is he honestly expecting Tanaka to just be hiding somewhere conveniently within cycling distance of home? Even if he _can_ get some sort of tracking spell to work, what then?

Chikara is not a coward, and he’s not particularly worried by the concept of travelling. But being back at home, his parents _do_ have certain expectations of him. Chores that they want completed; meals he’s expected to be present for; aunts, uncles and various cousins he’s expected to remember and visit from time to time. All the while he’s still back at home he’s got demands on his time which are going to interfere, and slow him down.

He’s not entirely sure about this part, of course—the letters Tanaka left him were delightfully vague—but he doesn’t really think he has a whole lot of time to spare if he’s actually going to find his missing (ex)boyfriend. Not least of all because the summer break won’t last forever.

Chikara lies awake and thinks about this fact, letting it loop over and over so he can examine it from all angles.

He can’t switch off, can’t stop thinking, planning, speculating. Hoping, too, although he’s reluctant to label it as such just yet.

 

* * *

 

Six in the morning finds Chikara dressed and on the road, the most important of his belongings wedged into his old Karasuno bag as he rides to the train station. He’s not running away from his problems though—and he actually _means_ that for once. He even said so in the note which he’d written for his parents, left propped on the dining table before heading out.

No, he’s not running away this time, he’s running _towards_. Towards answers, and with any luck, towards Tanaka.

…Before he gets that far though, he has a few favours to ask.

 

* * *

  

The morning shinkansen is busy—and even more so for a man with a dissembled bicycle in a sack by his feet, and a second large bag stuffed full of his worldly belongings on his back. It’s standing room only by the doors, and a lot of dirty looks from everyone who has to push past him. Apparently it’s Monday, which, who knew?

It’s vaguely appalling the way he’s lost track of the days in Miyagi, but returning to Tokyo is at least grounding him again. Already his plan feels realer, less conceptual. He’s worked out what he’s going to do, and nothing is going to get in his way. Not even grumbling salarymen who push past his makeshift bike storage system giving him dirty looks, or the lack of any convenient space at Tokyo station to reassemble his borrowed transportation.

He drags it outside to the waiting area in the end, and braves the judgemental stares of passers by as he charms it back together rather than doing the job properly.

Campus isn’t far, and the advantage of having rather more permanently borrowed his father’s bike is that he doesn’t have to worry about getting a pass for the trains. The _dis_ advantage is that he has to actually cycle it in Tokyo traffic, but he’s on a mission now and nothing’s stopping him, remember?

The sole concession to paranoia he allows himself is to ring ahead. It’s all very well being on a mission of great importance and haste, but that’s not going to be of any help if the people he’s looking for have decided they actually _are_ going home for the holidays after all.

The phone rings off the first time, which is worrying until Chikara realises he dialled Atsumu by mistake. Sighing, he pulls up for half a moment and picks the name more carefully.

“Ennoshita,” a calm voice says after two rings. “I didn’t expect ya to ring. How’s Miyagi?”

“Yeah, it was great,” Chikara replies. “Probably. I’m not sure, I wasn’t really paying attention, uh… Listen, I…uh…”

“Ya need my brother for something, but as he didn’t answer his phone ya wound up calling me instead,” the voice says. He sounds tired, but honestly that’s not anything particularly new. Miya Osamu would probably sound tired after downing his own weight in coffee, or even sleeping for a hundred years.

Well, that’s how Chikara offsets his guilt at calling him, anyway. Besides, it’s not even _early_ any more. It’s all of twenty minutes past eight, and that’s a perfectly serviceable time to be calling someone, particularly as it’s actually Monday.

“Er, yeah,” he remembers to say after half a minute, having successfully navigated another corner. “So, um, I have this problem, and—”

“Ya need Atsumu’s help,” Osamu finishes. “…At eight in the morning, though?”

“It’s almost half past!” Chikara cries, cursing as he has to slam on the brakes for a red light. “Listen, it’s an impossible task and it turns out actual human lives might be at stake, so I figured it was right up his alley.”

There’s an extended clattering and not-so-muffled argument on the other end of the phone. When Osamu’s voice returns it has the altogether more lively tones of his brother.

“Where are ya: I’m in,” Atsumu says. “We killin’ someone?”

 

* * *

 

How exactly the Miya family managed not to murder at least _one_ of their sons in the years between their birth and their being shipped halfway across the country for university, Chikara has no idea. Probably volleyball had something to do with it though—there’s nothing like a time-consuming club which requires constant attendance outside the home for preserving the sanity of family members. If that _was_ their strategy, it’s paid dividends, because sports scholarships in Toyko don’t get handed out to just anyone.

He’s not sure how much money the brothers are supplemented with, but every time he’s visited their shared apartment in the past he’s felt decidedly under-dressed, and this is no exception. It’s worse, in fact, because he’s wearing the crumpled clothes which were the first out of the drawer back at his parents house, and he’s got half the rest of his belongings on his back and the pieces of his bicycle slung in the sack over his shoulder. Inner Toyko is generally pretty short on secure storage locations, particularly as it turns out he left his bike lock in Miyagi.

“So if we’re not killin’ anyone, what _are_ we doing,” Atsumu drawls with evident disappointment, as the lift doors close behind them and they’re stuck together in a small metal box.

“We’re tracking down my ex-boyfriend,” Chikara replies. “And no, I’m not stalking him.”

The more annoying Miya’s smile reminds Chikara _exactly_ why he had needed a full thirty seconds to psyche himself up before ringing in the first place. Matters are not helped with the words that follow:

“Honestly, I wasn’t gonna ask. But wow, a specific denial really sells this whole business as a _lot_ more shady than it was already, and that’s sayin’ something. Have ya always been like this? I’d pretty much pegged ya as too boring for this kinda shit if I’m honest.”

Chikara sighs. The problem with Miya Atsumu is that he has no filter.

That’s a lie, he realises, as he explains the situation over the rest of their journey upwards and into the brothers’ apartment—and is interrupted every other sentence with would-be witty comments. The _real_ problem with Miya Atsumu is that he’s a complete ass when he knows that he can get away with it, and right now he’s playing this personality trait to its absolute limit.

“Wow. We are gonna need the _mother_ of all trackin’ spells for this,” Atsumu says, after finally conceding that it would be useful to let Chikara finish his explanation. “D’ya even have anything of his to base it off?”

“I have an old omamori he carried with him for a year, and if that’s not enough we can head back to Miyagi and raid his bedroom. As I said, Saeko won’t notice, and if it works and she remembers us barging in when it’s over, she’ll be too glad to have him back to care.”

Atsumu nods, stroking his chin in a would-be intellectual manner. He grins. “Well, are _we_ lucky then, ‘coz that omamori is totally—”

“—fine,” Osamu says, cutting him off and smacking the back of his brother’s head. “We’re not goin’ all the way up to Miyagi just to try out breakin’ and entering, ‘Tsumu.”

Atsumu gives his brother a dirty look, but doesn’t argue. He holds out his hand to Chikara. “Hand it over then. I can set up a regular tracker to start, which oughta sniff him out if he’s still in Japan somewhere. It’s stupid not to start with the basics, y’know? If he’s further off though or somewhere else, like maybe not even on Earth anymore—which, from what ya described, sounds pretty much guaranteed… Honestly we’re gonna need to go butter up a professor or something, ‘coz the materials we’d need for that powerful a spell are on campus under lock and key.”

“I don’t think think it’s possible to butter up a professor _that_ much,” Chikara points out. “You know as well as I do that no one’s going to hand over restricted substances without knowing what they’re for.”

“Y’know, I was hoping ya’d say that,” Atsumu replies, leaning back in his chair with a deeply unsettling grin on his face. “Means we get to do it the _fun_ way! We’re gonna need help though. Someone who can break us in and out without getting caught.”

Chikara glances over at Osamu, but the other Miya doesn’t show any signs of curtailing his brother this time. If anything, he looks almost as excited himself. Chikara knew he shouldn’t have trusted that calm exterior.

“He might not agree,” Osamu says, folding his arms.

“It’s _us!_ ” Atsumu cries.

“ _Exactly_.”

Atsumu laughs. “No, no, ya got it all backwards,” he says casually. “He’ll help _because_ it’s us. ‘Coz he knows we’ll do it anyway, and he’s too nice to let us get arrested again.”

“ _Again?_ ” Chikara exclaims, but he might as well not have bothered, because both the Miya twins have started plotting without him. Suddenly his Grand Plan doesn’t seem like such a good idea—but apparently that doesn’t particularly matter any more. It looks increasingly as though he’s just lost control of it entirely, and is rapidly being reduced to the role of passive spectator in his own damned rescue adventure.

He has at least got front row seats though, and they offer a spectacular view of Atsumu being reduced to a heap of good manners and near-begging as he calls Kita Shinsuke to ask for help.

“So, not that I don’t appreciate what you’re doing, but I hadn’t really planned to get a team together for this. Why exactly do we need to call Kita-san for help?” Chikara asks Osamu. Off in the corner, Atsumu is busy pledging that he has been an absolute, honest-to-everything _delight_ this past few months.

Osamu regards his brother with blatant amusement for a minute before replying, apparently recording the display for posterity.

“Well,” he drawls as he tucks his phone back in his pocket with a satisfied smirk, “Aside from graduating high school at the top of his class in basically _every_ subject, and gettin’ a full scholarship for Kyoto, he’s the best person we know at getting in or out of places without anyone noticing. We reckon he was born with it. Some people are naturally good at sports—like ‘Tsumu and I—and some people are natural sneaks. It’s a crime of nature, really—he was practically born to be a thief, but he’s too honest to ever make the most of what he can do.”

Chikara stares at him, absurdly grateful for a moment that it’s _Tanaka_ who’s missing, because a vision of him having a chance to get to know the Miya twins properly has flashed through his head and it is— frankly— _terrifying_.

“I can see how that’s a real disappointment for you,” he manages eventually. Osamu’s grin isn’t particularly encouraging. Isn’t he meant to be the _normal_ one?

They’re interrupted by a raucous cheer from Atsumu in the corner. It’s followed by a second as he vaults the sofa to sit between them, looking inhumanly smug.

“He’s bookin’ a ticket right now! Gonna be here tonight. We gotta tidy up and get a futon out, an’ pay for his food, but he’s gonna do it!”

“We’re all going to end up in prison, aren’t we,” Chikara says. He can see it now, the future laid out ahead of him like a stepping stone path to his own downfall. His parents are going to be so disappointed.

“What are ya worrying for, it’ll be _fine!_ ” Atsumu says, rubbing his hands. “We just gotta look up where all the store rooms are, and make sure we got a safe place to cast it after, so they don’t track it back to us, y’know?”

“Wrong,” Osamu replies, shaking his head. “ _Now_ who’s got it backward? There’s no point gettin’ all the way in there and then _leaving_. We oughta cast the spell on campus. Clean an’ secure, can’t be traced. Simple.”

“What, ya think they don’t have security cameras in there?” Atsumu snaps. “We gotta get in and out fast! No way I wanna hang around longer than we _absolutely_ need. I’m not gettin’ arrested on this one, ‘Samu.”

“Don’t we have to cast the spell in a particular place?” Chikara asks, hoping he can head off another argument at the pass. “I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure I’ve read that tracking spells require the starting point to be associated with one or other of the parties involved.”

Atsumu snorts. “Sure, if ya happen to be an _amateur_ ,” he says. “I learnt to cast ‘em on the fly _years_ back.”

“So he could steal my stuff,” Osamu adds, rolling his eyes.

“Y’think I was gonna give up just ‘coz ya hid it all instead of sharing?”

 

* * *

 

The day passes slowly. Far, _far_ too slowly to be trapped in an apartment with the increasingly infamous Miya brothers for company. But it _does_ pass, and by the time they head out to the train station to meet Kita they even have something of a plan in place.

It’s probably asking a bit much to believe that it’s a _good_ plan, but Chikara is running on about three hours sleep, about twice as many cans of coffee, and a twenty-minute power nap. He’ll take what he can get.

“I’m having second thoughts,” Chikara says all the same, as they loiter outside waiting for the train. “There’s got to be a better way. A less _illegal_ one, for starters.”

“I mean, wasn’t _me_ that said it was gonna be impossible,” Atsumu unhelpfully points out. “If ya want results, y’gotta put in the effort, yeah? Unless ya plan on leaving Tanaka to whatever trouble he got stuck in, I mean.”

“Stop being a jerk,” Osamu says, kicking his brother in the shin. He then undoes all the goodwill the action has earnt him by turning to Chikara and adding: “He has a point though, gotta admit.”

Chikara groans. “You realise we’re going to get arrested, right?”

With perfect situational timing, the train picks that exact moment to pull into the station. He couldn’t have planned it better if he were writing the script: a statement of fact followed immediately by the vehicle of their doom. Even amid the sudden wash of regret and anxiety, he can’t help but file the moment away. Perhaps it’s not too late to back out of it all, and save his future dreams and ambitions.

“It’ll be _fine_ ,” Atsumu drawls, rolling his eyes as Osamu instructs them both to wait outside. “How’d ya ever lead Karasuno with that attitude, eh? I mean, I’d pegged ya as timid, sure. But this is just straight up being a coward. It’s pretty pathetic, gotta say.”

Chikara is no stranger to intimidation tactics or Miya Atsumu’s shitty, shitty personality. He’s had plenty enough experience with both to see them for what they are, and to lay them aside without any particular difficulty, ordinarily.

 _Ordinarily_.

The trouble is, there’s just enough truth in those words that they cut cleanly through his practised indifference and strike him right across his overdeveloped core of guilt. Was he _really_ about to sell Tanaka out for the vanishing, one in a million chance of actually fulfilling his dreams someday? Being realistic for a moment, what’s on the line isn’t anything like as glamorous as that. If they _do_ get arrested, so what? He has a future of tedious officework ahead of him, and right now Tanaka has no future at all. Presumably, Nishinoya doesn’t either.

And when he frames it in _that_ light, Atsumu kind of has a point.

 

* * *

 

Kita Shinsuke is a quiet man ordinarily—or so Chikara remembers from the solitary time he met him, several years before on the far side of a volleyball court he only stepped foot on for the purposes of warming up. Perhaps that’s not much to go on as a baseline, but there’s certainly nothing to contradict that impression as he walks out of the station with Osamu wheeling a small case behind him, and regards the three of them in turn.

The way the Miya brothers have been talking him up, Chikara was expecting his expression to be filled with disappointment. Irritation, perhaps. He’s equal parts surprised and concerned that Kita _actually_ looks oddly proud.

“Shall we start?” he asks simply, and at this point, after everything that’s happened so far, who the hell is Chikara to say no?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shh. This fic lives, let's not worry about the update schedule. Also, believe me when I say, I had altogether too much fun adding the Miya twins to this absolute disaster. I also have no idea how long the remaining chapters will be. Probably a bit longer than the 3k apiece I had originally intended. Oh well?


End file.
